Crazy Red Dog

I've noticed that all the things I needed to be doing in off-hours before retirement have expanded to fill that 8 to 5 space.  And I'm still not doing them. 

I've also noticed many other, even less profound, things.  Like how some dogs bark a whole fucking lot.  All day.  Every day.  I never noticed this before because I was, like their owners, at work.

The previously much anticipated pleasure of a quiet home office is shattered by the noisy dog dramas on this seemingly quiet street.  The zooming paper boy, each pedestrian and every one of the trucks in the day-long delivery parade are accompanied by rigorous relays of barking.  Sirens stir an especially rousing chorus of howls.

As I try for an afternoon siesta, I hear Crazy Red next door.  That's not her real name but it suits her. She has a shrieking kind of bark - like she's fighting a badger and losing.  The reality is that she's trying to escape her yard and in the blessedly quiet intervals when she's not shrieking-barking, she's digging and leaping.   Like similarly obsessed dogs, the thrill is in the escape.  Once she's out she generally does nothing but wander around the neighborhood with glazed eyes.  For all the effort you'd think she had someplace to go.

I left town for some quiet.  On my return I found that Crazy Red had found meaning in her escape.  She'd gotten out of her yard and into mine.  Not only that, since neither Big Dog nor I were here to stop her, she went right in the dog door and chased the cat all over the house.  I might not have noticed except for the rain.  Mud tracks and skid marks trace Crazy Red's raid.  She jumped on the sofa, circled into the bedrooms and made a pass through the kitchen.

Did I mention the house is for sale?   A realtor who saw it suggested on the written comment sheet that I replace the carpet.

The cat is fine, BTW. 

Comments

[Inky Ink, Inc.]

Sounds like it might be time to install a lock on that Big Dog door.

[Natalie]

Geez. I'm thinkin', though, that dog may have done you a favor considering it could have been a person.
I, too, have crazy barking dogs in my neighborhood and it drives me bonkers.